A few months ago, I read a blog post on the Writer’s Workshop blog about the lack of diversity in publishing. In it was a discussion about how books with BAME characters in were assessed under different criteria compared to ‘mainstream’ books. One of the criteria was ‘is it Asian/Black/*insert minority group here enough’. You can see the original post here http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/blog/diversity-in-publishing/
This is something that has wound me up for years. Not because I care what colour characters are, but because all the Asian characters I’d seen in mainstream fiction have been of a type. None of them had lives that were anything like what I’ve experienced as a middle class British Asian person.
I commented on that post and Writer’s Workshop invited me to expand on the subject. The resulting blog post is up now – http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/blog/diversity-in-genre-fiction/
What do you think about diversity (or lack thereof) in genre fiction? Do you, as a reader, expect all your middle class characters to be white? (Or straight or able bodied or neurotypical for that matter).